I can't access the video from my work computer, but this sounds a lot like this. Same guy?

Well, a cynic says: bombard _anything_ with enough electromagnetic radiation and something unexpected will happen. But seriously, how much energy does it take to generate the radio waves--does the flame put out enough power to be a net gain of energy?

What he's doing is turning radio waves into heat. There may well be applications for this, but fueling cars is not likely one of them. That's because salt water is not acting as a fuel; it's acting as a converter. The energy that powers the car comes from the radio waves. It takes energy (e.g., electricity or gas converted to electricity) to make the radio waves.

That's all assuming it's not a hoax.

Larry:

I disagree.

The energy is not coming from the radio waves. If that were the case there would be no chance for a net energy gain. It would be a lie to call this a potential energy breakthrough.

I think this is a potential breakthrough because the radio waves appear to be splitting H20 into hydrogen and oygen. The hydrogen is what is burning in the test tube (and the oxygen helps).

Electrolysis has been the traditional method for splitting water. I did this back in high school chemistry. But the problem has always been that water electrolysis is a net energy loss. The resulting hydrogen provides less energy than the energy required to separate it from oxygen. No possibility of an energy breakthrough there.

The hope is that this new method is efficient enough - or can be made to be efficient enough - to be a net gain.

Even a small net gain could be revolutionary because it involves something that we have a practically limitless supply of - sea water.

Stephen, could you explain what happens when you "burn" hydrogren (with oxygen "helping")?

It doesn't matter what form of energy you use to break the atomic bonds in H2O. It takes a known amount. When you "burn" hydrogen with oxygen, you are creating water vapor by forming the bonds again--the bonds have less energy than the individual atoms; the energy released in forming the bond becomes heat.

There is no net energy gain, no matter how efficient your method is for breaking the H2O bonds.

I agree with D. Vision. There's no energy gain here.

D. Vision --

Why the scare quotes around the word "burn?" Sure looks like fire to me:

Hydrogen "burning."

Phil, the scare quotes were just meant to illustrate my point that "burn" here denotes a very specific chemical reaction that derives its energy from the creation of the atomic bonds in H2O by combining gaseous H2 with gaseous O2 from the atmosphere.

I think the overall point is missed often in discussions of hydrogen. Hydrogen is not an energy source. It is not a fuel. Unless we were to discover gaseous hydrogen in large quantities somewhere where we could mine it at low energy cost, we must first produce H2 by liberating it from more complex molecules, which requires energy. When doing this from H2O, there is no net energy gain, because "burning" hydrogen produces H2O.

Hydrogen fuel cells are basically batteries. You gotta put the energy in!

D and Karl:

Every energy source that humans have ever used has always been a question of "energy in v. energy out."

Some plants and animals were just not worth the effort to domesticate. Fortunately, many were.

Had all the world's petroleum been locked up in shale our economy would certainly be different today. We might have found that it wasn't worth the effort to get to the petroleum. We might have developed a biodiesel economy.

And we agree that water electrolysis is a net energy loss. "Energy in" is known, "energy out" is known. Unfortunately we see that it takes more energy to get the hydrogen than we get back by "burning" it.

But that doesn't mean that there isn't a more efficient way to get the hydrogen from water.

As a proof of concept that there are more efficient ways to split water and that hydrogen is worth the effort I give you...

Green plants.

Back in 2004 the Journal Science published an article explaining that green plants split water as part of photosynthesis. The article also explained that the method that plants use is far more efficient than water electrolysis.

So John Kanzius doesn't have to break the laws of physics to discover a more efficient way to split water than electrolysis.

Again, for hydrogen (or any other potential energy source we humans evaluate) the question is and always will be "energy in v. energy out."

Future refinements of Kanzius' water splitting method, or methods we might copy from green plants, or any other water splitting method we might invent in the future all have one thing in common:

We don't know what the "energy in" is. It's unknown. So I think it's a little premature to be dogmatic about there being no possibility of an energy gain with hydrogen.

you can't burn green plants. it's better to stack the cut/split chunks until they're dry, then burn them. Maybe not the most time-efficient fuel source, but goes really well with a drink and some marshmallows on a stick.

Two things. First, I agree that electrolysis is inefficient. I've heard claims of somewhere around 50% energy recovered from a full loop (after one puts the hydrogen through a fuel cell and recovers the energy). If he can produce pure hydrogen efficiently in quantity at the advertised 78% efficiency rate, he is ahead of the game (I think fuel cells come more efficient than 2/3 so it is an improvement).

There's several things that bother me here. First, the yellow flame is due to sodium content. So in the process of burning, he is releasing an unknown amount of sodium and presumably chlorine (since it's supposed to be salt water). Those elements easily could be reacting with the fluid container or any gear (electrodes, etc) inserted in the fluid and artificially increase the energy efficiency (ie, you aren't budgetting for the energy released in such a reaction).

Second, it's not clear to me how the hydrogen is disassociated from oxygen here. My suspicion is that some sort of electrolysis is going on in the background. If not, then it sounds like there's no way to seperate the two elements at the time of disassociation, ie, the hydrogen comes up mixed with the oxygen. That makes it far less useful as a fuel since the mixture is explosive under any sort of containment.

Finally, an implication of the prior two observations is that we don't know how pure the hydrogen is. It could have substantial mixing with sodium, chlorine, or oxygen in which case more energy is required in order to purify the hydrogen and which will reduce the overall efficiency of the system.

1) Dissociation occurs via photon absorbtion, ie, radio wave energy >> metal ion in solution ( Na but other Positive metal ions/salts possible of course). b. other atoms/molecules in the solution may absorb radio wave energy as well (microwave ovens are based on water molecules absorbing microwave radio emissions and heating up/vibrating).
2. Complex, as yet uncharted photon absorption, re-mission and absorbtion occurs ending in H20 absorbing a photon(s?) then breaking apart. It is possible the 'salt' NaCl breaks into Na and Cl as well (but wouldn't the Na react with the water or is that what is evolving the H2?).
3. All comments above this one assume the energetic balance (conservation of energy) rules out LESS energy/radio-waves would be required to 'break down' the H20 than can be later generated (via fuel cell hopefully, fire is, after all, so Paleolithic). All those people, who assume without experiment or suspended belief that nothing new is possible under the sun, please join the flat-earther/epicycle true believers in a line to the right. Thats a rude way to say it might be possible with photon harmonics/atomic resonance to amplify the effect of one photon in a constellation of other atoms and molecules. We did blow up Nagasaki -- remember? -- break up one U235 which spits out two neutrons which break up two U235 atoms, etc. That is a Nuclear (ask Bush how to pronounce that) reaction example I know, but photonic amplification maybe possible as well.
4. While it would be troublesome to separate the non-H2 gas components, further research could produce a 'bound' catalyst/surfectact that stays behind leaving just Hydrogen and Oxygen. Ingenious reactor vessel designs could also produce a separation of gases like the tried and true chem 101 experiment using a battery and platinum immersed in two vertical tubes of water. These artful reactor shapes would produce H2 gas and Oxygen as clean, separate outputs.
5. It seems a sad commentary on our society that we carp, minimize, and pooh-pooh the fairly simple, basic truth that a garage experimenter has found. If it came out of a large Corporation would we believe it more? Or from a prestiguous University? This from the same society that leapt on 'cold fusion' which is far less believeable and most probably far more difficult technologically than our current level of science can manipulate.
6. Trust the human mind to find a way to use this information efficiently and fairly rapidly. We made an atomic bomb and understood it's mathematically modeled functions before the first one went boom. The physics involved in this little test tube burning seawater will quickly confirm IF it is economically viable or potentially efficient.
7. We have about 100 years to change our technological energy systems to something that will begin a reversal of the climatic disaster looming for future generations with our CarbonDioxide waste. After that time the earth's Biosphere will find a way via evolutionary forces to deal with the changed environment. Sustaining the Billions of humans we have now and their descendants may not be possible but there's always anaerobic bacteria and cockroaches, maybe we should slip some of our DNA in them, just to be safe.
Love the site -- C

As an additional comment to my speculations on H2 creation via RF and salt water:

1) Water molecules may be separated by resonate destruction, just like a singer can shatter a crystal goblet by producing the goblet's resonate pitch with their voice. This offers a much lower energetic 'cost' than direct dissolution with electromagnetic potential (the standard Chemistry experiment mentioned above using a battery).
2) RF waves can be produced using a Superconductor circuit, optimized to use minimum energy to cool the superconductor.
Using these two 'off the shelf' techniques one could make a low INPUT energy H2 generator using salt water as the 'fuel'.
Static, large scale systems (or house size ones) could quickly be implemented, generating electricity without carbon cost (assuming solar power of some form was used to generate any needed energy to make the system operate or start up).
It's all very possible. Now the interesting thing is to find out how fast our carbon addicted corporate world will take to actually implement it. I sort of wish I was a lobbyist for the oil/coal companies because an invention like this is going to be a gold mine -- in a counter-attack, propaganda sense -- for quite a few years. Oh the money they'll spend to make it seem like a crackpot idea. Enjoy the fireworks on this one, they're just beginning.... C.

The video said that it reached 1500 deg if it generates this much heat to create the gas the heat energy could be recoverd with a simple turbine and the generated gas would add to the heat energy to double the output and you would still have the heat. this heat could still run steam turbines Hp and Lp and still have enough heat left for processes like desalination or process heating
I would like to see what the energy input is versus total energy released

Separating water into hydrogen and oxygen and then burning it, producing water with net energy gain would mean breaking both the 1st and the 2nd law of thermodynamics as it would make it possible to construct perpetual motion machine.

The experiment done by the guy uses more energy than it produces and he is not claiming otherwise.

The only thing that botters me here is what role does the salt have for the process.

The whole point to this discovery is that it may be possible to seperate the H2O atoms into their component parts, since each gas has a different weight, seperation of the hydrogen from the oxygen should be relatively simple. The released Chlorine and Sodium could also be collected seperately and used for other industrial or commercial uses. I do not understand the skeptics who do not believe that hydrogen is a fuel. Have they never seen one of NASA's rockets blast off from earth? Those rockets are fuled by hydrogen and oxygen. When hydrogen is burned as a fuel the exhaust is pure H2O which is a lot better than the H2SO4 that our current internal combustion engins produce.

Concerning the controversy about more energy expended than given off.....I think it's very important to put into contrast the fact that....

Currently our petroleum based fuels undertake a process of energy consumption that entails:

Paying millions of dollars for the rights to drill oil.

Spending millions of dollars in exploration and extraction.

Spending millions in transport of crude through pipeline and/or tankers.

Spending millions in refining and tranporting refined product to retail market.

Don't tell me that our petroleum usage generates LESS energy than is expended to arrive in my vehicles tank than the potential of this break through with salt water.

Right On Skeptical Dreamer!

I read a book of around 1750 and at that time they already noticed that salt water near the equator was different from water at northern parts. It is the sulfercontens that is the difference. So salt near equator is sun/sulfer and north and south moon and mercury. Now we know from alchemy that sulfer = heat and mercury = cold
Both are in salt. Salt is a perfect magnet. So salt water from the equator left in a still will have much sulfer in it. Distill and you have a perfect clean oil.
try it and tell it. God is free and free is freedom

Salt = also a perfect medicine and the mother of salt = water.
i advice rocksalt for women and equatorsalt for men

I'm not entirely convinced that this would solve our energy crisis in the least. We would be trading one brand of liquor for another. If we start pillaging the ocean of it's salt and it's volume of water there are going to be drastic changes in our climate and ecology. I understand that the waste of this is distilled water however it still changes it enough that some animals can't survive. We need to find sustainable energy, not "Practically limitless" energy